What the hell is this course about, really?

The study of the physics behind the Internet is a good way to teach physics in context. In terms of society, it is important for citizens to know how stuff works. For instance, while you, as students, all know how to operate a cell phone or digital camera, it is very likely that this is all magic to you. It is not desireable to live in a world where magic is omnipresent - it is much more beneficial to achieve a basic understanding of how things work. A technological society can not afford to be ignorant and believe in magic. Moreover, communication and information interfaces have very large scale societal consequences and now we have evolved to a language such as "Well the Internet told me ...".

Some things to consider in this context are:

• What is information?
• How is information coupled to networks and bandwidth.
• What are the rules that need to be established to make information coherent?
• How does information propogate?
• How do you ensure the integrity of information.
• What is encoding of information and why is it essential?

Along with the need to understand the physical nature of information is the need to understand basic physics that involves the transport of information (in this case electrons) through various media:

• How does electricity work?
• How do you make a circuit so that electricity can flow?
• How do you put logic and timing into a circuit?
• What is a semi-conductor?
• How does a computer work?
• How does internet routing and addressing work?
• What's a bit? How come I only get 2 of them?

In the rather near future, the traditional mode of logic and bits being encoded through electricity, will change over to encoding by photons. That leads to the following set of questions:

• Why are lasers and esssential part of communication networks?
• Why does my DVD player have a laser?
• Why is photon encoded information so much better and more efficient than electron encoded information?
• What are the difficulties associated with photon encoded information? Why doesn't that technology exist yet?
• What are photonic devices and why should I get to know them?
• What revolutions in display technology are coming? Can I really walk around with a shirt projecting a real time video image of my cat (sadly, yes ...)

In addition to electrons and information there is the issue of how do networks work. So we will be exploring such questions as:

• well,how do networks work?
• How does routing work?
• What's a packet (IPV4 vs IPV6).
• What is packet loss, latency, collision ....?
• How can the Internet even function as it grows exponentially?

And we will conclude this course with an examination of social issues associated with the spreading of Internet technologies. For instance,

• Is the Internet a net good to society or a net evil? (the jury is still out)
• Does it encourage social isolation or does it promote meaningful social interactions?
• Does it improve or does it degrade personal communication skills?
• Does it paralyze students with the illusion of knowledge because "there is an app for that" which means that students don't have to think independently?

Overall, this course is not so much a physics course (tho you will learn more physics than you ever wanted to) but rather is a course about science, technology and society with a goal of making the students who take this course more scientifically literate and less swayed by urban legends and heresay.